Gulf oil spill followed a familiar pattern, panelists say

TOM FOWLER, Copyright 2010 Houston Chronicle

Published 5:30 am, Friday, September 24, 2010

The Deepwater Horizon accident and its aftermath repeated a pattern from the past, panelists said at a symposium Thursday — a complacent period of relative industry safety, a disaster, then a flurry of government actions and demands for reform.

"We have a bad spill every 10 to 20 years that gets the world's attention," said Joe Pratt, a professor of history at UH.

The plans that come out of the spill are ignored until the next accident, then found to be inadequate.

"We don't need to repeat that cycle every time," Pratt said. "Complacency is the enemy."

BP's Macondo well blew out April 20, killing 11 workers on the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig, triggering a major oil spill and prompting moves toward new regulation.

The pattern matches that surrounding a trio of major spills in 1969 and 1970.

The 1969 Union Oil platform accident off Santa Barbara, Calif. - often cited as the impetus for the modern environmental movement - was followed in 1970 by spills at an unmanned Chevron platform in the Gulf of Mexico and the Bay Marchand accident off the Louisiana coast that killed four.

In response, the government halted planned lease sales in the Gulf and issued new regulations, said Jason Theriot, a UH doctoral student in history. These included more well casing, cementing and testing requirements, additional blowout prevention devices and weekly blowout prevention testing.

The BP spill likewise has prompted a halt in leasing and drilling activity, renewed safety inspections and new requirements following revelations about shortcomings of response plans.

The Exxon Valdez accident occurred after almost 9,000 tankers had been in and out of the port successfully, a safety record that likely helped create a sense of complacency, said Pratt. The Gulf of Mexico offshore drilling industry had enjoyed a similar good run prior to the BP spill, he said.

Human error and disregard for standard procedures proved to be the cause of the Valdez spill, Pratt said, and also may figure in the Deepwater Horizon accident.

The Oil Pollution Act of 1990, for example, was supposed to make sure companies pay for cleanup of the spills they create. But if a foreign-flagged vessel has a spill in U.S. waters and that company doesn't have any other assets in the U.S., it can essentially walk away, Nicholas said. "You can sue them all you want but where are you going to collect?"